The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

Letters, 1840-1846

II9

the miracles it may be said that if there is such uncertainty
about the common facts, you cannot possibly have evidence
sufficient to warrant you in believing the miracles. But is
not this unfair, because the history and the miracles mutually
support each other? The miracles, however improbable in
themselves, make the history probable. And is it not rather
the general question of the probability of miracles in such an
age and dispensation than the evidence for particular miracles
with which we are concerned? Whether, e.g., it is not
natural that these 'vestiges of creation' might be perpetually
going on until the spiritual world were set forth in Christianity?-whether it would not be contrary to analogy that
the God who was believed to dwell in the thunder should
not show Himself in the thunder? Does it seem consistent
to suppose such vast changes in men's minds and feelings
about religion, and to suppose no changes in the laws of nature
corresponding to it, but a harmony of subject and object which
consists in the ceaseless play of the subject around a nevervarying object? This seems to me the strongest and the
real ground of defending the Old Testament miracles.
To A. P. STANLEY.
I GREAT GEORGE STREET,
December, 1845.
I return Donkin's letter, which entertained me much. May
I venture one or two criticisms 1? If a certain friend of ours
saw that passage about the resurrection of our Lord, would
he not at once say, 'How can I be responsible, in what appears
to me defect of evidence, for not believing a fact?' To which
I imagine the only answer would be that this fact is so inseparably connected with certain doctrines that approve themselves to our moral and religious sense, that you must take
the fact with the doctrine. Suppose him to answer-I do not
see this connexion; you may be right, but you only prove a
lack of historical or metaphysical faculties in me for not agreeing
with you. Can that be essential to Christianity, the unbelief
1 On a writing of Stanley's, probably based on the pamphlet
referred to on p. I 5.